90 Ky. 157 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1890
delivered the opinion op the court.
To recover the three tracts of land in controversy appellee relies on a patent for each, issued July 2, 1885; upon entries dated January 5, 1885; surveys made February 2, 1885, and plats and certificate of survey recorded February 9, 1885.
By section 2, chapter 109, General Statutes, it is-provided a party obtaining an order of the county court, authorizing him to enter and survey vacant and unappropriated land, may, by an entry in the surveyor’s book of the county, describing the same, appropriate the quantity of land it calls for in one or more parcels he may think best, not exceeding two hundred acres in any one county. By section 3 it is provided the surveyor shall survey the entries in the succession in point of time in which the same are made, bounding the same by plainly-marked trees, stones or stakes, noting where it binds on a watercourse, or the marked line of another survey, giving names. Such survey must be made within six months-from and after the date of entry, and a plat and certificate of the survey must be made out by the surveyor and recorded in his books, and the original thereof and a copy of the order of court under which it is made must be deposited in the Register’s office within six months after survey is made; in which case legal title of the land bears date from time of making the survey; but if done after expiration of that period, the legal title shall take effect from date of the patent.
The provision for survey of entries successively in
The language quoted precludes necessity of concurrence of entry, survey and patent by and for one party in order to render void subsequent entry, survey or patent of the same land for another, but in express terms makes the existence of either sufficient. While, therefore, a party who makes the first entry of land then subject to entry may, if necessary, enforce by judicial proceedings his right to have survey first made, nevertheless, if there has been already either an entry or survey made of the same land by another, his entry, survey and patent are, in the meaning of the statute, to be treated as void.
It thus results that, as the record stands, appellant, Goff, must be' regarded as having legal title to the three tracts of land, which took effect from May 12, 1887, date of his patent, and that the one issued to appellee, though elder in date, is void. But the lower court assumed, in instructions to the jury, that although Goff had the oldest survey, his patent could not avail, because not issued within six months from such survey. The statute does not make the right to a patent depend upon the plat and certificate being
Wherefore, the judgment is reversed, and cause remanded for a new trial, and further proceedings consistent with this opinion.